"A successful woman"

[foreverastudent]

what is one?

and is it different from "a successful man"?

A successful woman is a concept used as a stick to beat other women with and reinforce stupid patriarchal norms and roles

She can be cautionary tale (the gin raddled barren career woman who sacrificed love and family to reach the top) or aspirational (at the top of her career and still has time to handsew costumes for the kiddies' school play) or traditional (she is a homemaker who lives through the hapiness of her spouse and children)

Bleurgh

so it's an oxymoron then? or an impossible fantasy?

it's bunk as a concept in the society in which we live in a way that 'successful man' is not

men can be 'successful' (whatever that means) without it being some sort of comment on the life of the average shmo

cf also a single woman being the exemplification of all women, with a responsibility to not show them up/set a good example or whatever - see the recent apprentice hoo haa about how the women were setting the cause of women in business back a billion years or something by their behaviour

this sort of thing does not get applied to men as a group

however that said it does get applied to nonwhite people

cf also this board - women are constantly being accused of making it hard for other women or somehow being the justification for misogyny by virtue of their opinions